


Labyrinth’s Heart

by LookingForDroids



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Drabble Sequence, F/M, The Dark, extremely condensed casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25081732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Gertrude and Dekker venture into the darkness to deal with a problem.
Relationships: Adelard Dekker/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Multifandom Drabble 2020





	Labyrinth’s Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



The warehouse doesn’t look like much, but Dekker found it by tracking disappearances. Delivery workers, mostly; they leave safely, but something calls them back. 

He doesn’t expect to find the missing persons here, but he looks. What he finds is a door, rusting around the edges, a stairwell behind it. Darkness pools at the bottom, heavy and cold.

Gertrude says the manifestation has sustained itself for too long to be safely ignored; it exerts a weight, and strained fabric tears eventually. Dekker doesn’t expect to find the missing persons, but if they’re anywhere, they’re here.

Nothing for it. They descend.

.

The place is a maze, and passages keep changing in the dark. 

Beside her, Dekker casts his torch across crumbling concrete – the light weaker now, gone slow and rancid. He brought spares. Still, knowledge presses in, close as the darkness outside the beam. Time runs short. A necessary compromise, then: look, and the way is clear. She’ll pay the price later. So will someone else, eventually.

Not Dekker, though. He’s too useful for that. They’ve known each other too long.

Every labyrinth has a heart. Most things die, with the heart removed. They’ll find it, and light it up together.

.

A small room. A furnace room, decrepit, old. Pipes rattle overhead, dripping viscous shadows. At the center, the furnace breathes.

Thoughts tease the edges of Dekker’s mind, too hungry to be his own: this is a home. He could be welcome here.

 _Fine,_ he thinks, swallowing fear. He’s a guest? He brought a housewarming gift.

They set the charges fast, then run, back along the same path. It won’t lead them out, but they need distance. Darkness clings, grasping. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.

Behind, muted, an explosion shakes the ground; before them: another turn, sudden stairs, a rusting door.

.

Later. Brackish shadows dripping from her hair, swirling down the shower drain in a nondescript hotel. Harmless now. May the most dangerous monster survive.

Outside, Dekker waits – no, Adelard, dangerous and so stubbornly human. His room is across the hall, but that’s hardly relevant. He watches, smiling wearily, and for once it doesn’t bother her to be seen.

When he flicks off the lights, it’s not the maze’s beating heart she remembers. The darkness in this room has a different quality, familiar as the feeling of his mouth against her own.

Few things are innocent. This is one of them.


End file.
